How To Lose Your Cuil 20 Seconds After Launch | Hacker News Reader

How To Lose Your Cuil 20 Seconds After Launch

techcrunch.com

25 pointsnickb26 comments

The next "Google killer" won't be labeled as such until it's already "killed Google" (whatever that means). It'll sneak up on the pundits by challenging assumptions so deeply seated they completely ignore it.

As for Cuil, I hope they build themselves into a great search engine. They're going to do that by returning super-relevant results, not touting a big index. One of my first searches was a real question I asked Google lately, "best time to visit Russia" (a rare full-phrase query for me). On Google, great results. On Cuil, not even close, i.e. missed that "Russia" is the primary subject of the query, not "best time to visit".

If the "more data beats better algorithms" principal is to be believed, a big index is a requirement to have a shot at Google.

I'm happy for their index to be enormous, but to proclaim it's "bigger than Google's" at launch entirely misses the point of search: finding things.

First find things. Then tell me your haystack is way bigger than the next guy's.

I think more data about each page would be more helpful than simply more pages.

That's what Google themselves did. Instead of searching merely the text of pages, they also considered more data - namely, which pages link to a given page.

It's not the size of the index, it's how you use it.

principle

Goddamnit. People say "principal" instead of "principle" so ridiculously often that I came to think it was the right spelling in english. Thank you.

The principal of your school is your princely pal. Hopefully he has principles.

GAH! Build it up, then tear it down. I'm sorta getting sick of these articles, I mean it was nice they were covering a new startup, but the rinse and repeat of 'here is something is cool and new' and then 'it sucks doesn't work' pattern is getting old.

The thing that sucks more, is i won't stop reading techcrunch because it does have value and does have relevant news. Sorry </vent>

The word "cuil" has become just another flag word for me - if I notice the word in a title or post, I skip it.

Look, it thinks Mike Arrington is Mitt Romney (http://www.cuil.com/search?q=techcrunch&sl=long)

...and apparently Paul Graham plays for the Chalotte Hornets in his spare time. There's also a goofy picture of him grimacing next to a link to his essay about trolls. :) (http://www.cuil.com/search?q=paul%20graham&sl=long)

Also, in the results for "Objective Caml", the 3.10 release manual is illustrated by a happy guy on a racing bike. That's pretty random, but fitting - I like the free association (however intentional it is).

I made a friendfeed room to have some fun with Cuil. Post the search terms and the associated images found by cuil. Should make for a good quick laugh :)

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/funwithcuil

"If you are going to feed the hype cycle, you’d better be able to deliver. Because it only lasts about 20 seconds if you don’t."

...until I write another article about how you're over-hyped

my friend hit me on im ' heard of cuill' , i said yeah 'not impressed'... the lack of relevant results.. to me means they might be trying to sell there indexing tech. the problem is with 32mm to produce that tech the sell has to be 300mm , i feel for the investors and company.

I like how Cuil uses the same color scheme as Google. As does everyone else trying to clone Google or Google ads.

If you're going to "kill Google", why not come up with your own graphic design? Or just change the colors to purple or something :P

I entered "iPhone 3G sales" (no quotes) and was given a porn picture next to an Apple PR link. I do hope they succeed in challenging google, but looks like they have work to do.

It probably associated it with an article* about how porn encoded for iPhones is supposedly becoming a niche market. Not as random as you think.

* Such as this one: http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-38365-98.html (is SFW, if it matters).

In the real google killer, the results search for you. (It will be much like Soviet Russia, in that regard.)

"Starting to flip is starting to flop" - Who said that ? Dharmesh Shah ?

I'm surprised no one is comparing Cuil to Powerset.

Did you see Paul Buchheit's comment?

“Maybe Cuil isn’t supposed to be good. They must know that the results are bad, but they launched anyway. Maybe they aren’t trying to build a full search engine, but just want to demo their crawling+indexing technology with the expectation that someone will buy the company and plug in better ranking.

...

—Where “someone” = MSFT, who has already shown that they are willing to pay a lot for non-functional search engines."

lol tan pintados uds manga de maricas

quick question -- who cares about this crap?

startup launched in a crowded niche, looks neat, doesn't perform as well as the big guys. sky is blue. dog bites man. etc.

i don't need 300 stories on it. or maybe thats just me.

how to generate multiple articles by msm, tech blogs, etc... in the same day!

born and die in one second nice try

u try to find my site c4-antipro.com , with words c4 antipro 2 pages results and no show the site, with words c4-antipro neither appears

lol lol lol lol lol lol x1000000

good engine !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! xD

now try to find something with word google xDDDDDDDDDDDD

What happens there?

How many i ned pay to my site can be found on the last page even?

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